...is the Electoral College – an indirect voting system and not a national popular vote. This system was implemented by the Founding Fathers about 200 years ago (Shea 2005, 4-6) In recent times the debate about whether the Electoral College is still an effective system considering the circumstances the United States has to face now, is arising more and more. “American society is highly polarized in its perception of the existing election system” (Belenky 2012, ix). This paper has the aim to contrast the arguments against and in favor of the Electoral College and to demonstrate possible alternatives. In the conclusion an answer to the question “Should the Electoral College be reformed?” will be given. 2. How it works The Electoral College, as it is outlined in the 12th Amendment, is a body of electors chosen to elect the President and Vice President of the United States. In Article II of the Constitution the electing procedure is written down. Each state delegates a specific number of electors to the Electoral College, dependent on its representation in Congress (House of Representatives & Senate). According to the fact that each state has two Senators and at least one Representative (dependent on the size of the population in the state), each state has three electors at the minimum (for example Alaska). With 55 electors, California has the largest number at the moment (see illustration 1) (Electoral-vote.com 2013). Figure 1: Blank map of the U.S. with electoral vote ...
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...The electoral college system, what the United States of America uses to elect the President ever four years, is an outdated system that is not needed and does not make the election process any easier. We have had two instances where the popular vote has been different than the electoral college numbers. In an effort to keep the President of the United States of America popular, we must start off with electing someone who earned the majority of votes in the first place. To do this, we must use the popular vote. Accordingly, this paper will be directed toward the general audience of all voters and will discuss how the electoral college system is a bad idea to continue using and why the popular vote is the correct way to go. So, what is the “electoral college”...
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...The Electoral College: How Our System of Elections Needs to be Changed Richard Brookman Metropolitan State University of Denver Author Note This paper was prepared for ENG 1020, Section 031, taught by Professor Clark. Abstract Article two, section one of the Constitution details the creation and operation of the Electoral College. Each representative of each state, both senators and representatives, cast a vote for the President based on the wants of their constituents. This is the basis for the Electoral College; however our forefathers had little insight into the problems that can arise from crafting a quick solution to the problem of electing the commander-in-chief. Over the past 200 years, many changes have been made to the Electoral College when a problem has risen to give us the Electoral College of today. The people of the United States have seen what the Electoral College has become and want the election process to change into a popular vote system. The popular vote system isn’t the answer. Only a combination of the two systems will help to give fair representation to all of the states, while keeping the essence of majority rule that the people desire. This system includes a single vote for districts that are won by popular vote, getting rid of the human form of electors, and using today’s technology to make it easier to maneuver through the complexities of the voting process. The Electoral College: How Our System of Elections Needs...
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...Alexander Hamilton’s Electoral College and the Modern Election Colin Campbell Prof. R Hurl TA: Matthew Lesch Tutorial: Thursday, 4:00 PM, UC 67) U. S. Government and Politics (POL 208 Y1Y) 1 November 2012 Alexander Hamilton’s Electoral College and the Modern Election When American's leaders assembled in Philadelphia in 1787, they originally had the goal of solving issues that had arisen from the Articles of Confederation, which had governed the young nation since separating from Britain. Instead, they drafted a completely new document that established a more permanent and effective central government. With it, they established the office of President of the United States. Rather than being directly elected by the people or selected by the legislature – as described by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers – the head of state was to be elected by an independent institution that existed solely for the purpose of finding a man who was up to the job: a group that would become known as the Electoral College. However, as the political nature of the country evolved in an unanticipated and partisan way, the independence of this body became increasingly irrelevant, resulting in a system which fails to meet the standards of a true modern democracy. Although the Electoral College system has never substantially been reformed, it is now a mere formality which leads to the types of campaigns which it was designed to prevent. In The Federalist, Number 68, Hamilton argues...
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...government with the power to decide who to vote. Today’s century, the United States will not allow the people to vote for president and Vice President directly, but they utilize Electoral College to represent voter’s choice. In the Constitution article 2, section 1, clause 2 it states in specific detail how many electors each state is entitled to have. The...
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...Elector | The Electoral College | Should it be done away with? | Presidential election seasons tend to be an exciting and volatile time within the United States. This is made ever more true by the existence of the Electoral College. When brought up in everyday conversation, the phrase Electoral College gets danced around and avoided. That is because it is such a difficult concept to get a grasp on. Not many people exactly know how our election system works due to the cryptic language that it normally is defined with. It is safe to assume that the uneducated voter believes that whichever candidate wins the most votes nationwide is the winner, and that is sound logic. However in the case of the Electoral College, that sound logic doesn’t hold true; one of the commonly disputed deficiencies of the electoral system. Are these criticisms justified or are they merely just complaints? Another important question to ask is why this system was put into place by our Founding Fathers; there must be a logical explanation, right? In order to begin to understand the system that is currently in place, it is best to look at why it was seen as a necessary measure and some of the history surrounding it. Our Founding Fathers thought it was important that the States and the citizens residing in them should have a say in the appointment of our nation’s leader. The last thing they wanted was to have Congress deciding who would become president. They feared this for several...
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...The Electoral College Andie Downs ENG 105 Research Paper Final Every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, the election for the next President and Vice President of the United States takes place. Although thousands of individuals cast their vote for their candidate of choice on this day, it is really Electors that they are voting for. The electors that are selected will go on to choose the next President and Vice President of the United States. For example, the candidate that could win the popular vote of a state is not guaranteed because election is actually decided by the group of electors, called the Electoral College. The U.S Electoral College is the division of the government that selects the President and Vice President of the United States. It consists of 538 electors, where the amount from each state equals its number of members in its congressional delegation. In two states, Nebraska and Maine, the candidate is determined by majority vote and the winner of the popular vote receives 2 electoral votes (“What is the Electoral College?”). Allotting a number of votes to each state in this way is inaccurate and doesn’t properly represent the vastly larger or smaller states. Although the use of an Electoral College during a presidential election is considered a key element to democracy, its application to the process makes it unrepresentative of the voters and elections should instead be based on the popular vote of the people. When the constitution...
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...In this paper, I am going to be going over what it takes to elect the president. The next thing I am going to go over is the Electoral College. Third are the ballot outline, and the factors that affect the elections. The final thing that I am going over is about the multiple roles of American citizens. The steps of that have to be taken to become a president begin with the constitution where it was modified by the twenty-third, twenty-second, and the 12th amendment. There have been many steps that were added over many years, by the state law, or by custom. The process voters chose electors to represent their state to gather and chose the president. The Constitution says that in order to be president, the candidate must receive the majority of...
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...Are third parties doomed to failure in the USA? The success of third parties within the US can strongly be argued, in that they are ’doomed to failure’, in particular through recent years. This can be explained due to the vast sum in financial demands in which third parties cannot meet due to the inability to gain credible reconciliation to obtain huge sums of funds, and thus continue to live in the shadow of the Republicans and Democrats; two growing leading parties. Also, other factors like state legislation which encourage third party barriers, such as evidently shown in New York were for a party to be placed on the ballot paper it must reach a certain number of signatures. Through the electoral system of FPTP encouraging a two party system, and the two leading parties being seen as ’umbrella parties’ in which there is little room for a third party to offer an ideological stance on policies which has not already been covered. Means it is highly unlikely for a third party to succeed as evidently shown within the debates in 2000 with Gore verses Nader, where straight ticket voting also contributes to the third party failures. However, third parties must be credited in that it has proven to be worthy of success, like in 1996 where Jess Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota. Third parties are largely disadvantaged and doomed to fail due to their inability to raise a substantial amount of funds or ‘war chest’. this is firstly, simply down to the matter of third...
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...The factors that influence the founders in creating the Electoral College were brought on by lessons learned in the early elections the result of those factors are still used to this day, two centuries later. The founding fathers had a lot to consider when it came to selecting how they would choose the leader for their newly formed government. The first president was chosen by the founding fathers before the election of 1800 in which the candidate with the most votes was elected president and the runner up was to be the vice president. This was proven to be a problem due to the different views of the parties that were running against one another. Having just won its independence from Great Britain and only having the Monarchy as a model to obtain guidance it was very important that the founding fathers looked at every angle of picking the person to lead the country at the time. The wrong type of man at the helm of the country could be devastating to what the founding fathers had worked on establishing. If the people were to have a say in who was to be president the electoral college could be seen as a way to protect them from a person that could persuade them with words but truly have a hidden agenda or not have the best interest of the country in mind a “demigod “. Adolf Hitler is a good example of this type of person becoming a leader that was able to persuade an entire country into trying to take over the world and this kind of person was exactly what our founding fathers...
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...The Electoral College (EC) was established in Article II of the Constitution and amended by the 12th Amendment in 1804. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. Senators creating a total of 538 electoral votes. A majority winner must receive 270 votes to be elected. With a few minor exceptions, the Electoral College gives all of the electoral votes for each state to the plurality winner in that state, regardless of the margin of victory. This "winner takes all" arrangement at the state level can elect a President who loses the popular vote, as was the case in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000. Firstly, one reason supporting the abolishment of the EC is that it suppresses the popular will. This is because it may allow a candidate to win despite only receiving a minority of votes across the country as a whole. For example, in the 2000 elections Gore received approximately 500,000 more of the popular vote than Bush winning in most major cities and urban counties. However, Bush received more electoral votes throughout the rest of the nation winning more than three times the amount of counties than Gore. It also suppresses the popular will through faithless electors. These are members of the House of Representatives who were chosen to vote for a party but do not vote for their state’s preferred candidate. For example, in the 2000 election, Barbara Simmons abstained voting for Al Gore to protest...
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...“The Electoral College is a process, not a place (What is the).” The Electoral College has been around since the Constitution, but the reason for its existence is strange. When the Constitution was being created the Founding Fathers believed that the new found American citizens would be too stupid to govern themselves, and thus, The Electoral College was born. The Electoral College functions by giving each state a select number of votes based on population (What is the). Once each state gets their Electoral votes they must choose Electors; this is a two part process. First, Political Parties from the state chose potential electors, and then the people of the state vote on which electors they see fit (Electoral College Fast). Since its creation, The Electoral College has gone unquestioned, and we’ve never stopped to ask ourselves if it should still be in place. People are in opposition to The Electoral College because they believe it creates a sense of inequality, and lack of voice in vital elections. On the other hand, some people believe that The Electoral College gives states with smaller populations a voice, and is helping stupid people from making the wrong choice in elections. To some, The Electoral College has a magnitude of flaws perpetuating a unfair social hierarchy; to others, it is a system that is preventing inequality and anarchy to flourish in the United States. People believe that the The Electoral College is an unfair process created to silence the...
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...The Electoral College: The Fear of Mobocracy Katherine Kinert Olympic College, Bremerton Abstract The Electoral College is a very important part of the United States Electoral System. However, very few Americans actually understand how it works. The lack of political efficacy in this country is a large reason of why some people do not think the Electoral College should be abolished. However, as Eric Black (2012) stated in an article on PBS News Hour, “Polls for many years have reliably shown that a majority of Americans would prefer a straightforward popular vote for the presidency.” Originally the Electoral College was established to prevent majority factions from having too much power causing mobocracy to occur. However, this system is outdated and the conditions that prompted the founding fathers to institute this precaution no longer exist today. Also, the fact that almost all the states use a winner-take-all system to determine which candidate gets all of the electoral votes for the state. Will abolishing the Electoral College rid the United States from mobocracy? Introduction The Electoral College is outdated and does not follow the true spirit of American Democracy. David Stewart (2013), a lawyer in Washington, D.C., states that, “Because most people knew little about public events or leaders from distant states, the convention delegates reasoned, they would not make a wise choice between presidential candidates.” Today, people have access to information through TV...
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...A lot of people are writing now about why Kerry lost. Here I want to examine a more specific question: why were the exit polls so wrong? In Ohio, which Kerry ultimately lost 49-51, exit polls gave him a 52-48 victory. And this wasn't just random error. In every swing state they overestimated the Kerry vote. In Florida, which Bush ultimately won 52-47, exit polls predicted a dead heat. (These are not early numbers. They're from about midnight eastern time, long after polls closed in Ohio and Florida. And yet by the next afternoon the exit poll numbers online corresponded to the returns. The only way I can imagine this happening is if those in charge of the exit polls cooked the books after seeing the actual returns. But that's another issue.) What happened? The source of the problem may be a variant of the Bradley Effect. This term was invented after Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles, lost an election for governor of California despite a comfortable lead in the polls. Apparently voters were afraid to say they planned to vote against him, lest their motives be (perhaps correctly) suspected. It seems likely that something similar happened in exit polls this year. In theory, exit polls ought to be very accurate. You're not asking people what they would do. You're asking what they just did. How can you get errors asking that? Because some people don't respond. To get a truly random sample, pollsters ask, say, every 20th person leaving the polling place who they voted...
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...Electoral College Debate Introduction As said by Juan Williams, a journalist for FOX News, “In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history.” Although forty-five U.S. presidents have been elected and this scenario has only happened three times, it still leads to scrutiny, questions, and arguments about the effectiveness of the Electoral College. These disputes have gone on for quite a while as to which method of choosing the president is the best option. The electoral...
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